And so it ends...(or does it)?

...in which my legs perform a monologue.

If you've been paying attention you'll know that the original point of this blog was for me to write about how I was getting on with training for a half marathon.  I've kind of meandered about talking about lots of other stuff on the way, but that's just par for the course with me.

Today was the day that all that training and preparation had been for, except...there hasn't really been much training and preparation for the last 3 - 4 months, and none at all for the last 3 weeks.  This is because I've been working away (on a different contract to the one that I was on when I started the blog) and this time I haven't had much time for training; I have to drive across the country twice a week which leaves me with 4 days out of seven when I could train (weekends are out as that's family time), but recently I've had to work evenings as well because the contract isn't paying the bills so I've had to take on other work as well, which has to be done sometime.

Anyway, now my excuses are out of the way I shall tell the story of the event itself, in the words of my legs.

At the start: "Oh, we're going to some running?  OK, well that's OK.  We haven't done much for a while but I'm sure we'll be fine."

1 Mile in: "We're running up steep hills?  Oh well, that's a bit new but you know us, always willing to learn.  We can keep this up all day, no problem."

2 Miles in: "Yup, we're good.  Keep on running, we're with you on this."

3 Miles in: "Toilet break?  Why didn't you go before?! Come on, we're raring to go here!"

4 Miles in: "No more upwards hills now?  Excellent!  Let's get whizzy!"

5 Miles in: "Hahaha, look, a shop called The Knob Shop.  And it's next to a family church!" (Editor's note: this is really true.  They sell doorknobs and stuff.  Here you go: http://www.knobshop.biz/ Yes, that link is safe for work, honest.  Unless your manager objects to doorknobs).

6 Miles in "We're not stopping yet?  Okay.  You know it's in our contract that we don't have to do this, right?  But we'll keep on going.  For now."

7 Miles in: "We didn't sign up for this.  We're not talking to the brain now.  Lungs, tell the brain that if it wants to sign up for this sort of thing in the future it can damn well do the running itself."

8 Miles in: "You said there were no more hills to go up! You said so back at 4 miles in! What the hell is wrong with you?!"

9 Miles in: "*Dark muttering*"

10 Miles in: "Okay.  We've tried to be reasonable.  We've been nice.  We've carried on well beyond the call of duty.  If you carry on running We Will Hurt You."

11 Miles in: "Don't say we didn't warn you.  Because we did.  Here it comes.  Let's see how the brain that signed us up for this enjoys being carried on two quivering pieces of jelly."

12 Miles in:"Argharghargharghargharghowowdamnyoubrainwehateyousomuchrightnow."

13 Miles in: "Alright, alright, we'll let you run the last .1 miles; because we're nice like that."

13.1 Miles: "It's over?  Seriously, there is something very wrong with you.  We quit.  Oh wait, we can't, we've got tenure here...well we're going to ache at you for the whole of the rest of the day.  So there."

On realising there was a mile or so walk back to the car park: "*censored*".

So, there we have it.  What my legs don't know is that I will be signing up for the Bristol half marathon in September, because I hate my legs.  Right now the feeling appears to be mutual...more on that soon, hopefully,.

For those who really want to know, I completed the half marathon in 2 hours and 53 minutes according to the website; I'm sure I can knock that down to 2 hours 20 at least with more training, and hopefully less.

Thanks for reading - I shall post more about the emotional and physical side of doing something like this soon - now I'm off for a hot bath.

Cheers,

Chris

Back on the treadmill

...in which I mutter vaguely about stuff.

Christmas and the New Year have staggered passed in a whirl of (over) indulgence; in Wilde's words, "I can resist anything except temptation" and so all of my good intentions of reeling in my usual excesses went straight out of the window the moment the Christmas goodies came out; unfortunately this means I'm back where I started 5 months ago, with about a month and a half to get fit enough to run 13 miles.

Hmmmm....

Still, nil desperandum and all that.  I'm still working away from home (and to be frank getting pretty fed up of it - I was expecting to be working at home at least every other week by now); because I'm now driving down on a Sunday night and coming home on a Friday I seem to have a lot less time at home than I did at the last contract and even less time to run.  I do need to get myself sorted very quickly though 'cos I only have about 7 weeks left before I have to run 13 miles.  Put like that it suddenly sounds very scary.

So I'm going to start running at least twice in the week, but weekends are a major pain since that's all the time I have with my family at the moment; unfortunately I'm not likely to have much choice other than to start running on a Saturday or Sunday as well.

Anyway, it is now time for my regularly scheduled moan, and this week my moan is...people that stand and chat in supermarkets.  More specifically, people that stand in the middle of the aisle that I'm trying to push my trolley down, or in front of stuff that I need to get to; almost as bad as the chatters are the people that apparently need a 5 minute discussion with someone else before they can make the monumental decision about which sort of bread/milk/biscuit they should buy, and apparently have to stand right in front of whatever it is with their trolley blocking it while they do so.

Just to be clear, I don't mind people standing and chatting; what I mind is people standing and chatting where they are (obviously) in the way while a queue the length of the M6 builds up on both sides of them.

Moan over for the week.  I shall now hopefully be resuming normal service...

And the band played on...

...in which I discover the joys of the M25

Well it's not quite true to say I "discovered" it; I have travelled on it before, but it's been a while.  My new contract is in Kent, and initially I need to be down here to gather user requirements and so on, which means driving down on a Sunday evening and leaving early on a Friday (trains are not an option this time, as they're simply too expensive and inconvenient, so I'm hiring a car each week).

In its time the M25 has been called a lot of things.  A 117-mile long car park. A rather pointless waste of public money.  The occult symbol Odegra (see Good Omens).  I prefer a more literal description - it's a horribly long and dull stretch of road on which a large minority of people apparently feel that it's perfectly OK to drive like sub-literate barbarians to whom the words "Highway Code" are a mere collection of syllables; and it is also now the bane of my life, especially on a Friday when it acts as a way of stopping me getting home at a reasonable time.

Anyway, I'm staying with friends down here at the moment, which is nice as it means I have someone to talk to in the evenings and they're looking after me really well.  It's been a bit of adjustment as it's such a long way to come but hopefully within a couple of months I'll be able to alternate between being at home and being down here.

So...running.  Yes.  Um.  Oh look, a flying rhinocerous!  Okay, okay, I admit it, I haven't really done any for the last couple of weeks.  We do have a treadmill at home now (and there's one in the garage here too that I can use) so the weather isn't really a problem, but I'm definitely struggling on the motivation front.  So, more effort definitely required there.  On the plus side I do still seem to be losing a little bit of weight each week which will hopefully make the running easier once I do manage to get back to it.  Which will be soon.  Honest.

Apart from that I'm learning lots of stuff about the new programming stuff from Microsoft, but since a very small percentage of people are likely to have any interest in that I shall skip lightly over it.

Lots has probably happened in the last couple of weeks that I've managed to completely forget, which I shall blame on age.  Or possibly madness.  Or both.

In any case, I shall try to make an effort to blog more - it's been a somehat frantic few weeks but hopefully things will settle down a bit now and I can get on with boring you all.